2026 Chinese Grand Prix - Friday

Front row secured for the first Sprint of the season

• George Russell secured pole position for the first Sprint of the season with Italian teammate Kimi Antonelli lining up right behind in P2.
• George scores his first Sprint pole position in his career and the fifth for the team.
• Within the sole hour of Free Practice, the team completed its programme in a busy session running both the Soft and Medium compounds across low and high fuel.
• George ended FP1 in P1 and Kimi P2 and the duo continued that form into Sprint Qualifying, progressing serenely through to SQ3.
• While the wind started to shift in SQ3, George and Kimi were unmoved and secured the front row for tomorrow’s Sprint Race, starting respectively P1 and P2, with Lando Norris in the McLaren rounding out the top three.
• Earlier in the day, the team’s F1 Academy driver Payton Westcott secured P4 in her first qualifying session of the season as she embarks on her first full season in the all-female series.

George Russell

I am happy that we were able to secure pole position for tomorrow’s Sprint race, the first Sprint pole of my career. The W17 has been feeling great the entire day, and we’ve been able to make the most out of the car in today’s qualifying session. When the wind picked up in SQ3, we began to lose some speed on the straights, like others, but still managed to put all the sectors together and secure a front row for tomorrow’s race.

Despite our pace, we are cautious of the threat posed by others. We also know that anything can happen during a Sprint race, especially at the start. We’ve been working hard with the team on our getaways from the grid and have plenty of learnings from Melbourne. We will also need to focus on tyre management as we always see a lot of graining at this track.

We’ll keep working overnight to ensure a good Sprint race tomorrow but also a successful qualifying session for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Kimi Antonelli

Securing a front row for tomorrow’s race is a good way to start the weekend. Congratulations to George for Sprint pole too; this continues our strong form as a team from Melbourne. Despite that, we know there is still a lot of work to do to improve. We will go through all the data from Friday and analyse how we can put ourselves in the best possible position for the Sprint but also the all-important Qualifying session. Tyre management can be challenging here, and our starts were a limiting factor last weekend; we need to put all this together to perform as best as we can and fight for victory and pole tomorrow.

The overall positive is that the car felt good all day today. We need to keep it in that good window and, if we can do so, then I think we can bring home strong points in the Sprint. I’m looking forward to racing tomorrow and continuing this first Sprint weekend of the season.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We did a decent job of landing the setup in a good place today and the drivers were happy with the car from the first run in free practice. From there, we made some relatively minor tweaks during the session and into Sprint Qualifying but mostly it was to follow the track evolution.

The Sprint Qualifying session was fairly uneventful; the car was working well on both compounds and it's great to have got both on the front row. The sprint races are very good learning for the Grand Prix, not to mention an opportunity to score useful points. We've been doing a lot of work on starts and formation lap energy management over the last few days so tomorrow is a good opportunity to put that into practice. It's also helpful to understand how the tyres behave; this track is pretty tough on the fronts, so the drivers are going to have to manage that quite carefully. 

Payton Westcott, F1 Academy Driver

I’m really happy with P4 in today’s first Qualifying session of the season! It’s a solid result for my first time racing here in Shanghai and I am excited for the two races ahead this weekend.

The team did a great job getting the car in a good window today. At the same time, I want to keep my expectations level; it’s only the start of the weekend and the major points come from Saturday and Sunday. I can’t wait to get out there and start racing. The goal now is to stay focused, make the most of the opportunities, and see what we can do in the first race tomorrow.